Cathryn (formerly catslash) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
remindmeofthe) wrote2010-01-11 09:04 pm
remindmeofthe) wrote2010-01-11 09:04 pm
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The Thick of It post: 2x01
I'm still trying to stockpile these a little, and not post one until I have one or two more written up. It's easier to deal with that way. So at this rate, I will definitely finish the first six eps before classes start back up a week from tomorrow (yay), and maybe even have done the specials.
Second series premiere? Well, it'd be a good premiere ep, if that weren't completely fucking stupid. Anyway.
omg so much going on in this episode. Which is pretty much par for the course for this show, but when you're actively paying attention and trying to sort it out and writing stupid little notes for a post-viewing dissection, it gets a bit overwhelming. There is, in case you haven't noticed already, no way I'm going to get to everything in any ep; feel free to comment on stuff I've missed as well as the stuff I talk about.
For starters, this episode introduces two new recurring characters, Jamie McDonald and Robyn Murdoch. (Jamie did not get a surname until In the Loop, but I'm not going to be doing one of these posts for that, so I'll just use it here instead.) Jamie is hugely popular in fandom, which is a thing that did not entirely click with me until this rewatching, I think because of his accent. I am from the States, after all, and I've had exposure to a variety of UK accents via watching too much British TV, and damn have I come a long way from when I needed subtitles to watch The Office. But Paul Higgins's accent is thicker than tends to make its way into the shows I watch, and so with Jamie, I have to either concentrate intensely on his dialogue or just give it up and miss half of what he says, and neither is really conducive to just enjoying the character. The repetition has helped, though - just because I don't remember the old episodes very well doesn't mean that some things don't sink into my brain anyway - and I'm getting more comfortable with Jamie. I may discuss him more after seeing more of his eps and tying them together and yadda, but for now, let's go with the line from Olly that sums his first appearance up perfectly:
"When I met you this morning, I thought you were the nice Scot."
Robyn is not a favorite of mine, but I think this is mostly because she tends to get overshadowed by the more prominent and more forceful characters. In this episode, she's got this great mix of slightly overdone humor and anxiously bewildered incompetence that makes me wonder once or twice whether she's being serious or putting it on (in a particular instance, not in general). The moment I remember from this episode is her total failure to execute the "bullshitting Hugh's way out the door" strategy - Hugh told her about it, but he failed to mention that he'd initially object for form's sake, and so she torpedoes it and Hugh is stuck in a factory all afternoon. Which I love. And it's tempting to think that she does it on purpose - she does, after all, join in on the fucking around earlier by pretending to ask Hugh for the money to buy a card for Terri, and by neatly smacking Olly on the back of the head while Olly is busy being wary of Glenn.
Buuuut, she does seem genuinely confused, so it's probably just a Robyn moment. Oh, well.
I also like how she serves in this ep to highlight Terri's efficiency - Hugh and Glenn do nothing but bitch about Terri behind her back, and this ep shows how much the department needs her to keep things running smoothly and you know what? That is the one thing I did not like about series three. Seriously, I'll try to keep the series three talk for when I actually get there, but the dumbing down of Terri was not appreciated by me. I kept wondering if, with my memory problems, I'd just imagined her being genuinely competent before, and this episode proves that I did not.
Speaking of Terri, this episode also introduces the subplot of her father's health keeping her out of the office. Which isn't a major subplot, but will end up allowing Hugh the chance to really showcase what an asshole he can be, so that'll be fun.
Final introduction in here: Olly and Emma. This story goes all the way into series three, and I love how gloriously screwed up it is. We see how much pressure Olly gets at work to use his relationship to help the current government, and series three brings indications that Emma's gotten similar pressure from the opposition. Do they even like each other? Would they have liked each other if their jobs hadn't gotten in the way?
And I love how Malcolm has jumped on this immediately. We never do find out how everyone knows about Olly and Emma, but there is no doubt in my mind that Malcolm knew first. Spreading it around would be helpful, too - the more people to keep the pressure on Olly, the better.
This is an episode where Malcolm is just pitch perfect. He's on top of everything, he puts the right people in the right places at the right times (Olly: "I've been given a desk in Downing Street to phone my girlfriend?"), he uses everything available to him, he gets Olly to knife Hugh in the back, and at the end of the day he has been so awesome that 10 Downing Street literally has a party to celebrate. It's all so neatly orchestrated, and so much the kind of performance we associate with Malcolm Tucker, that I'm not sure I have much more to say about him in this post. Malcolm wins at life. The end.
More stuff about Olly: There's a moment that pretty well encapsulates the frantic pace of the episode, where Olly is trying to deal with Piss Woman on the phone with Jamie barking in the background right behind him. Can you even imagine? Olly is so not cut out for so many things about his job (any part of it that involves dealing with people, for example), but anyone who can take more than twenty seconds of that without completely losing his cool deserves a fucking medal.
This is Olly's Moral Event Horizon episode, where he shows his true colors once and for all by actively screwing Hugh over to make himself look good to Malcolm, in spite of Hugh's pleas with him to save his skin. I love the shots of him at the end of the episode, looking so uncomfortable as everyone else celebrates the story tearing Glenn and Hugh apart - does he feel guilty about what he's done? Or does he assume that they'll know he did it and make his life hell when he goes back to Social Affairs? I'd like to think that Olly once had a conscience in there somewhere. Maybe this was its final dying gasps?
And fucking Hugh, oh man. The stinger at the very end builds on Glenn's frustration last ep over Hugh's willingness to fuck him over politically, as Hugh concludes that Olly deliberately shifted focus onto Glenn to save him . . . and thanks him for it. Thanks him effusively. After sympathizing with Glenn over how bad it made him look. With a friend like that, Glenn, you'd best not acquire any enemies.
Second series premiere? Well, it'd be a good premiere ep, if that weren't completely fucking stupid. Anyway.
omg so much going on in this episode. Which is pretty much par for the course for this show, but when you're actively paying attention and trying to sort it out and writing stupid little notes for a post-viewing dissection, it gets a bit overwhelming. There is, in case you haven't noticed already, no way I'm going to get to everything in any ep; feel free to comment on stuff I've missed as well as the stuff I talk about.
For starters, this episode introduces two new recurring characters, Jamie McDonald and Robyn Murdoch. (Jamie did not get a surname until In the Loop, but I'm not going to be doing one of these posts for that, so I'll just use it here instead.) Jamie is hugely popular in fandom, which is a thing that did not entirely click with me until this rewatching, I think because of his accent. I am from the States, after all, and I've had exposure to a variety of UK accents via watching too much British TV, and damn have I come a long way from when I needed subtitles to watch The Office. But Paul Higgins's accent is thicker than tends to make its way into the shows I watch, and so with Jamie, I have to either concentrate intensely on his dialogue or just give it up and miss half of what he says, and neither is really conducive to just enjoying the character. The repetition has helped, though - just because I don't remember the old episodes very well doesn't mean that some things don't sink into my brain anyway - and I'm getting more comfortable with Jamie. I may discuss him more after seeing more of his eps and tying them together and yadda, but for now, let's go with the line from Olly that sums his first appearance up perfectly:
"When I met you this morning, I thought you were the nice Scot."
Robyn is not a favorite of mine, but I think this is mostly because she tends to get overshadowed by the more prominent and more forceful characters. In this episode, she's got this great mix of slightly overdone humor and anxiously bewildered incompetence that makes me wonder once or twice whether she's being serious or putting it on (in a particular instance, not in general). The moment I remember from this episode is her total failure to execute the "bullshitting Hugh's way out the door" strategy - Hugh told her about it, but he failed to mention that he'd initially object for form's sake, and so she torpedoes it and Hugh is stuck in a factory all afternoon. Which I love. And it's tempting to think that she does it on purpose - she does, after all, join in on the fucking around earlier by pretending to ask Hugh for the money to buy a card for Terri, and by neatly smacking Olly on the back of the head while Olly is busy being wary of Glenn.
Buuuut, she does seem genuinely confused, so it's probably just a Robyn moment. Oh, well.
I also like how she serves in this ep to highlight Terri's efficiency - Hugh and Glenn do nothing but bitch about Terri behind her back, and this ep shows how much the department needs her to keep things running smoothly and you know what? That is the one thing I did not like about series three. Seriously, I'll try to keep the series three talk for when I actually get there, but the dumbing down of Terri was not appreciated by me. I kept wondering if, with my memory problems, I'd just imagined her being genuinely competent before, and this episode proves that I did not.
Speaking of Terri, this episode also introduces the subplot of her father's health keeping her out of the office. Which isn't a major subplot, but will end up allowing Hugh the chance to really showcase what an asshole he can be, so that'll be fun.
Final introduction in here: Olly and Emma. This story goes all the way into series three, and I love how gloriously screwed up it is. We see how much pressure Olly gets at work to use his relationship to help the current government, and series three brings indications that Emma's gotten similar pressure from the opposition. Do they even like each other? Would they have liked each other if their jobs hadn't gotten in the way?
And I love how Malcolm has jumped on this immediately. We never do find out how everyone knows about Olly and Emma, but there is no doubt in my mind that Malcolm knew first. Spreading it around would be helpful, too - the more people to keep the pressure on Olly, the better.
This is an episode where Malcolm is just pitch perfect. He's on top of everything, he puts the right people in the right places at the right times (Olly: "I've been given a desk in Downing Street to phone my girlfriend?"), he uses everything available to him, he gets Olly to knife Hugh in the back, and at the end of the day he has been so awesome that 10 Downing Street literally has a party to celebrate. It's all so neatly orchestrated, and so much the kind of performance we associate with Malcolm Tucker, that I'm not sure I have much more to say about him in this post. Malcolm wins at life. The end.
More stuff about Olly: There's a moment that pretty well encapsulates the frantic pace of the episode, where Olly is trying to deal with Piss Woman on the phone with Jamie barking in the background right behind him. Can you even imagine? Olly is so not cut out for so many things about his job (any part of it that involves dealing with people, for example), but anyone who can take more than twenty seconds of that without completely losing his cool deserves a fucking medal.
This is Olly's Moral Event Horizon episode, where he shows his true colors once and for all by actively screwing Hugh over to make himself look good to Malcolm, in spite of Hugh's pleas with him to save his skin. I love the shots of him at the end of the episode, looking so uncomfortable as everyone else celebrates the story tearing Glenn and Hugh apart - does he feel guilty about what he's done? Or does he assume that they'll know he did it and make his life hell when he goes back to Social Affairs? I'd like to think that Olly once had a conscience in there somewhere. Maybe this was its final dying gasps?
And fucking Hugh, oh man. The stinger at the very end builds on Glenn's frustration last ep over Hugh's willingness to fuck him over politically, as Hugh concludes that Olly deliberately shifted focus onto Glenn to save him . . . and thanks him for it. Thanks him effusively. After sympathizing with Glenn over how bad it made him look. With a friend like that, Glenn, you'd best not acquire any enemies.